


burnt and purged away

by ndnickerson



Category: Justified
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 20:58:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/423116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Never Leave Harlan fic exchange, for nemo_r. Raylan's already had a long day when he finds out Loretta needs his help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	burnt and purged away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nemo_r](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nemo_r/gifts).



It's not that Loretta thinks she owes anyone anything, because she doesn't. She keeps her debts paid. But going to school in the time after Mags feels like marking time.

In biology they take colored pencils and draw in heart, kidney, liver of the frog splayed pinned in the dissection tray and the smell of death and formaldehyde, the feel of slick cold skin under her fingertips, doesn't make her squirm and squeal like the preppy girls with their folded-over shorts and glossy lips. It just puts Loretta out of herself, and the grass, the air itself is calling her. She can be anywhere but she is _here_ , and when she digs her fingers in the grass, ignoring the gym teacher's pointed sighs and threats to send her to the principal's office, she can't imagine leaving this.

But she can't imagine staying, either.

Her roots are free though, flapping like loose shoelaces behind her, dark and stained as the cuffs against the heels of her hands when she tucks her hair behind her ears.

Every time she dares to imagine that maybe, maybe she won't wake remembering a fist twisted in her hair, a comb's teeth digging into her heart, a gun shaking in her fist, she can feel nothing else.

The biology teacher, Miss Moore, likes to pretend they are all friends. That biology is fun and any use to anyone, when most of her classmates are concerned with nothing beyond whose backseat they'll spend prom night in, whose older cousin will buy the case of beer, whether the coal plant will be hiring over the summer. "Use what we've learned during this unit," she gushes, slender fingers twisting in the air, "and write a journal entry about what evolution means to you. What ability do you wish humans had, that they don't now?"

This is what hurts most: that Mags is dead, that Loretta didn't have the satisfaction of doing it herself, and she's Mags's sole heir, cursed and blessed with a fortune, and as realistic as she knows she is, she knows guilt for her daddy's blood is all over it, staining every penny. He may not have been the smartest man, her daddy, but he was _hers_ , and everyone seems to think that hurt was buried with the rest of him. _Oh how mature, what a big girl you are_ , they croon over her at church, eyes turned down in sympathy that isn't sympathy at all.

Her mouth stays straight but a flush creeps along her jaw when she hears the empty words, when she sits down to work on her assignment, working hard to ignore the raucous sounds of her foster siblings in the next room.

_I wish we knew how to forget._

\--

Raylan isn't even staring right at her when she walks out of school that Thursday afternoon, elbows bent out like wings threaded through her backpack straps. The day began a perfect blameless blue and now the clouds are building, purple-rimmed and ominous, racing up from the horizon. The raw hint of rain is carried to her on the wind.

His hair is a little more grey than when they first met. The star gleams from the waistband of his jeans and his fingertips stroke a line around his lips, his brow furrowing as he mutters something to whoever's on the other end of the call, and then he sees her, and he puts away whatever it is that he's carrying and ends the conversation with a brisk snap as he flips the phone closed.

"Marshal," Loretta says evenly, squinting against the sullen glare of the sky as she tips her chin up.

"Loretta," Raylan says, in that tone of bemused weariness that has become all too familiar. Seems like every public servant she's interacted with—and there have been many, of late—speaks in some variation of it.

"Somethin I can help you with?"

Raylan chuckles and he does that little half-glance back at her. "Got any ducklins trailin along behind you today?" he asks, and when she shakes her head, he jerks his thumb at the passenger side.

"Am I in some kinda trouble?"

Raylan pops his door open and his phone buzzes again on his hip. "Not yet," he says, and she slides into the towncar, holding her backpack on her lap.

Most of the other cars she travels in are disorganized and nasty. Coffee stains and lint all over the cupholders, crumbled cereal ground into the back seats and duct tape on at least one window. The towncar smells new and faintly like cigarette smoke and the only thing in the car besides herself and Raylan is a small yellow gift bag on the back seat.

"And it ain't even my birthday," she says, shifting the bag on her lap.

Raylan mutters a word Loretta has said more than a few times and starts the car. "Got to make a stop," he says, glancing at his cell phone, putting it away without taking the call. "But at least if I get shot, we'll already be at the hospital. You notice anyone watchin you at school, Loretta?"

He always does that, talks like he's waiting for her to trip, but she thinks maybe he does that with everyone. "Only my entourage," she retorts, digging in her backpack for a stick of gum. "All beggin me to put on that Van Halen concert at the next pep rally."

Raylan chuckles, but it's brief. He looks like he hasn't shaved in too long, and there's something pressing on him. She knows how that is.

"Ain't gonna ask, don't need to know, and you ain't dumb," he drawls, merging onto the highway. "We got a tip somebody's gonna make a move tonight and I been told ambush ain't the way to go with this one."

Loretta remembers blood on the flagstones, the guy who came to repair the window. That little frown on her foster mother's face, creasing above the bridge of her nose. She can imagine Raylan picking the bad guys off like tin cans in a shooting gallery, and then that mental image isn't nearly as amusing anymore.

"But you'll be safe."

"And someone else—"

"At home with the li'l ones." He nods. "Maybe we can dig up some Monopoly or Go Fish or somethin to pass the time."

"Hope you got Showtime or somethin, else you'll be watchin the backs of your eyelids while I study for my bio test," she replied.

"Study," Raylan replied, in mock surprise.

"Yeah, study. Hear there's good money in meth labs."

Raylan made a face at her mock-innocent expression. "You'll have to hit the chem books for that. And when I say chem, I mean study all the ways you can blow your ass up messin with that shit."

"Your concern warms my heart, Marshal."

\--

He buys flowers from the hospital gift shop. Yellow roses to go with the yellow bag.

Loretta doesn't come up with a sarcastic rejoinder in time, so she just sits down in one of the hard plastic chairs in the hall, facing the open door, just as he told her to. All around her is the soft chirp of the equipment, the startled or monotonous squall of babies, groans and sobs. Makes her think of her grandmother, things she doesn't want to remember, but there's nothing to distract her in her bag.

Loretta doesn't know the woman in the bed, but she's like the same age as Miss Moore, long wavy hair and slender neck. The cadence of her voice is almost the same as Raylan's, though, with that low sarcasm. She doesn't look that sick, just puffy and uncomfortable.

Raylan hands her the bag and the flowers and she tries to act annoyed, and then she glances over and sees Loretta. And that little frown creases above the bridge of her nose.

_I don't want to be here either_ , Loretta wants to say, but it's always been easier to keep it unsaid. _I never asked, okay?_

There will be a day Raylan doesn't know to come for her and she'll be waiting in the dark, waiting for wide eyes, the plausible lie, the demand. More blood.

Maybe that was Mags's real legacy. _This is who we are, girl. This is what it takes to hold onto what's yours._

And look where it's left her, cold in the ground.

Raylan comes out rubbing his forehead, gesturing wearily for Loretta to join him, and Loretta walks out without looking back.

\--

"Congratulations. Surprised you're here."

Raylan shrugs and turns to introduce Loretta to the dark-skinned woman who opened the motel room door. He slurs the first syllable of her name so it comes out sounding like _Retta_ , and that makes her feel uneasy until she places it. Remembers being four years old and bringing a cold beer carefully to the source of that sound, her slurred name like a growl up a rough throat.

"Nice to see you again, Loretta," Marshal Brooks says, with a little smile. "Wish it wasn't always under such circumstances, but here we are."

Loretta dumps her backpack on the couch. She makes a face when her stomach growls. "Usually eatin peanut butter and crackers by now," she says. "Lunch in the cafeteria ain't shit and the little ones eat all the time."

The corner of Rachel's mouth turns up just a little and Loretta thinks they're gonna get along fine.

Raylan's phone buzzes again and he checks the display, scowling. "I'll go get some... crackers. I guess."

"Potato chips," Loretta votes. "I been dyin on wheat germ and fruit juice."

Rachel shoots a look at Raylan, the baleful look Loretta has seen on other women's faces. _You get your ass back here soon or there'll be hell to pay._

Raylan already has his phone to his ear when he's walking out, and almost compulsively Rachel checks her own before dusting her hands together. "So, we might be here a while," she says apologetically.

"Hey, at least it's quieter than the house," Loretta says, shoving her hair out of her face. The cuffs of her coat brush against the heels of her hands as she unzips her backpack. "You any good with biology?"

About five minutes in Loretta realizes that she's going to have to teach Rachel what they're working on to do her any good, and that trying to put mitosis and meiosis in words is helping. She skims over the bold vocabulary words, flipping through her fragmented notes. Diamonds and triangles cluster in the margins of her notebook, circles clustered like perfect grapes, trails left when she twirls the excess ink off the end of her ballpoint pen.

Loretta has known for a long time that she'll have to work for what she wants—and now she doesn't have to work a day in her life if she doesn't want to. Long as she is content to wait in the dark every night, hand on the gun under her pillow, waiting for those who would steal what blood bought her.

"Know who's comin tonight?" Loretta asks, and glances up. "Comin after—me?"

She almost slips and says _the money_ , but it's her secret, hers and Raylan's.

Rachel sighs, rising to do a circuit of the room, to peer sideways through the blinds. "Someone who thinks you have somethin I been assured you don't." Her voice is low, nearly flat, but the expression in her face when she glances back at Loretta...

She wonders, belatedly, why they don't just let them do it. Break in, rip the house apart, look for something that can never be found. Spread the word that wherever it is, it isn't with Loretta. Then she thinks of that little frown above her foster mother's eyebrows and flips to the chapter review.

Mags was ready to tell the world to go fuck itself once she had what she wanted—but Loretta isn't Mags, never wants to be.

She wishes she could be that strong, though. She feels like there's a place in her that will always be raw, sore, and Mags had something to live for, but it feels like everyone Loretta has ever cared about is dead now.

She wants to ask about the woman in the hospital bed, but maybe that's a secret too, hers and Raylan's.

He saved her life. That ain't nothin—there have been nights she's cursed him for it, for that look in his eyes when he told her not to run away—and it's a meaningless debt. But he is like her. He hates this place even while he loves it.

She's just asked Rachel how long she's been a marshal when they hear a knock at the door, and Rachel pulls her gun before they hear Raylan's voice, exasperated. He's juggling a drink tray, two paper sacks of food and a plastic bag from the convenience store. The door brushes his hat, tips it askew on his head.

"Tim?"

"Nothin yet."

Grease. It's been so long. Loretta digs into the hamburger, piled high with chili and onions and mustard, almost groans a little at the first french fry. They're good people, her new family, but she hasn't had soda since the last time she bought a can in the cafeteria.

After dinner Raylan gets another call and Rachel makes a pot of coffee. Loretta isn't going to be able to sleep, not like this. The biology textbook is a blur in front of her.

There's so much she wishes she could push aside, forget.

"I been a marshal for seven years," Rachel says, taking the seat beside Loretta's again. "It's a tough job. Got to have a good head on your shoulders." She glances in Raylan's direction; they can hear him getting exasperated with someone. "Well, most of the time, anyway."

"You get to travel a fair amount?"

"Some. I'm not from here, though. From Tennessee."

Loretta glances up, and though she doesn't voice the question, Rachel sees it in her eyes and answers anyway.

"Why here? I don't know. There was an opening." She shrugs. "And it's the same everywhere, isn't it. People who need protecting from—" She cuts herself off.

From people like the ones who killed her father. Loretta flips a page without seeing it.

She likes the idea. Saving someone else the way she wasn't. Using Mags's money to do it. She wanted to be a veterinarian a month ago, but this, all this, the meaningless words she's fighting to keep in order in her head, it won't change anything. Years of school and late nights when what she really wants is for someone to teach her how to be that person waiting in the dark, instead of the one cowering in a shabby motel room.

Raylan—Rachel, all of them—they won't be around forever, and there will always be rumors, desperate whispers. Another threat.

She can go somewhere else, pull it all in behind her, but a part of her will always be _here._

They think she's asleep when Rachel heads out to do a perimeter check and Raylan sits down at the small table, letting out a low sigh. "Every night," he murmurs. The heel of his hand scrapes over his stubble. "Every night like this." He sounds so, so tired. Lonely.

Time is supposed to fade it, but maybe it wears down, like water relentless over bone, the knowledge that nothing will change it. Alone, alone, even with all these people around them.

On the way to school in the morning, she'll ask if one of them can maybe take her to the firing range Saturday. She knows she can talk Raylan into it, and at the thought, she finally feels herself relax a little, to drift away.

"Eighteen years of panic," Raylan says softly, with a little chuckle, when Rachel comes back in. "That how this is?"

"Yep," Rachel murmurs in reply. "Eighteen if you're lucky."

Maybe being alone isn't the worst part. Maybe knowing that you _aren't_ is.


End file.
